Billionaires And The Future Of Democracy – With Carl Rhodes

With wealth-inequality now worse than it was in ancient Rome, and the uber-rich exchanging wealth for power and applying that power to circumvent democracy and amass even more wealth, what can we do to break out of the loop and create a more equitable future? 

I met with the wonderful Carl Rhodes, Professor of Business & Society at the University of Technology Sydney, to try to answer that question.

Over the past ten years, the richest 1 percent have gained at least $33.9 trillion in wealth in real terms, enough to end annual poverty 22 times over. Since the US elections in November 2024, billionaires have accumulated wealth at a rate three times faster than the previous five years. In the twelve months to March 2026, the billionaire class accrued $4 trillion in new wealth, a full one-fifth of their total accumulated wealth. 

The consequence of neoliberalism is accelerated social and ecological destruction. We have all the technologies we need to halt global warming and feed the planet through peak population. We have all the money we need to end poverty and provide universal access to healthcare. If we make better collective choices. But ‘we’ are not making them, not when the uber-rich are parleying extreme wealth for extreme influence. Policy skews to the rich; the rich get richer; the toll worsens. 

Carl dissects the myths around 'good' billionaires, explains the system that got us into this mess and – more importantly – how we might get out of it.

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As always, check out the companion article with additional takeaways and the full transcript on the FutureBites page. More on my work as a Futurist Speaker, and why I do what I do, at www.brucemccabe.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello and welcome to FutureBytes, where we explore pathways to a better future. I'm your host, Bruce McCabe, and my guest today to talk about billionaires and associated topics is Professor Carl Rhodes. Welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

Carl.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Great to be on the podcast. Thanks for inviting me. Thanks for making so much time. And um this is such uh an important discussion. I've been looking forward to it so much. And you came to my attention because I guess everybody in the world is getting very uncomfortable right now, I certainly am, uh, and a bit more aware of the power and influence of a few billionaires uh on really big changes in the global um industry, uh society, life. We look at ownership of information systems and conduits to news and direct influence on American politics has become very salient. Um so I really wanted to have this conversation because you wrote this wonderful book recently, and what a title to capture those like, guys. Stinking Rich. The four myths of the good billionaire, um the latest of a long line of books. So that's so that's how we've come here today. Um you explore in your work as I understand it, really a triangle here. You're looking at business and society, you're a professor of business and society here at University of Technology, Sydney. But you're looking at connections between business, wealth inequality, and also democracy, and sort of that triangle that I draw. Would that be an accurate way of describing you?

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Yeah, that's that's pretty accurate. I mean, and the you know, the book's about billionaires, um, but really that's also a way of more broadly talking about the culture and politics of inequality. And the billionaires is this growing uh class of often highly visible, potentially even ostentatious uh figures. They just kind of represent the extremes, you know, the the pointy end of a system of inequality. Um so it's the broad system of inequality that I'm really concerned with. I mean, people sometimes say to me, Carl, do you hate billionaires? And I say, as individual people, you know, I might have an opinion. I find Elon Musk quite an unpleasant character, but that's not the point, you know. The point isn't about bringing it down to whether we do or don't like particular individuals. It's that they represent a system of inequality that is broadening and that's getting worse and is making life harder for more and more people in more and more different countries. So I think the the focus has to be on what is that system and what perpetuates it, and what can be done to make it uh more fair. Um and that that idea of fairness as it links to equality, as it links to to freedom is where the democracy angle comes in. So I think you've summed it up pretty right that it is therefore about this sphere that looks at democracy democracy and equality.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

And they're certainly affecting both the trend towards inequality, and which is very, very clear when we chart it over time, yeah. Um, and also the individual um billionaires who wield so much power at the pointy end of that inequality, they're certainly affecting our future. They're they're very much dictating uh a good portion of our future right now.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Because in a way, when it gets to extreme wealth, it's not so much just about money. Like if your income or my income doubled, our lives would change significantly. Well, I don't know, maybe you're a billionaire. I'm not. But if my income doubled, I'd move to a nicer house probably. Um I'd probably get uh a nicer car, I'd certainly be drinking a higher quality glass of wine for dinner on uh a Friday night, it's Friday today. Now, if Elon Musk's currently worth somewhere around a trillion dollars, if his wealth doubles, his material life doesn't change in any way. He can't, you know, you can't consume anymore, you can't live anymore better. At that level, it is actually about power. The the money is actually about how much power you have and how that power can be exercised. And if you look coming back to to Musk, which is a he's a frequent example in in the book, if you look at the influence that he had on the on the US election, um uh when he was helping in in the uh in the election campaign and putting a lot of his own money and gaining a lot of uh publicity and really kind of working that process, and then later using that with the work he did with the Department of Government efficiency, which was a bit of a failure. But but that is about how you leverage wealth for power and influence. So that's another thing that's there where and in that case, you know, arguably uh quite a distortion of uh democracy. I don't know if you remember when the inauguration of Donald Trump in January of uh 2025, there's a an area in the in the the place where the inauguration happens, which is normally reserved for foreign heads of state and dignitaries. And who was there? The tech billionaires, Elon himself and and Mark Zuckerberg, and uh I think Jeff Bezos was there and and a few others, again symbolizing the kind of connection with extreme wealth and political power, which Trump is very happy to to uh to leverage, you know, unabashedly without any with shamelessly.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Yeah. And it seems that um the central thesis for for a lot of what you've written here is that um and you I can see it every day, but there's uh a sort of a vicious circle here. You've got people amassing uh a lot of wealth, converting that to power because as you say, they've got everything they need in life, and that then the desire becomes influence to impose their own personal goals and values on the greater world, yeah, and we definitely see that sort of behavior. But then in imposing that power and also being given that power very willingly, which is something we need to explore by the public who look to billionaires to solve some of their problems, yeah, they then uh usurp bend-break democratic processes. Yeah. And certainly they go around the back of democratic processes to get things done. And so in the end, they perhaps end up damaging this the the machinery democracy and often in a way that helps perpetuate even more wealth for themselves. It's like that that sort of a circle. Is that the fair that's somewhere?

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Yeah, it is. I mean, I mean if you think about inequality and billionaires, on the one hand, it's an economic issue, and you know, there's many economists who who will study this and do do great work in terms of looking at at the mechanics of of how it works and quantifying it. My approach um uh is kind of in parallel to that, is to try and look at this from a cultural perspective. It's like, how do they get away with it? Well, you know, why where are the the crowds of people with pitchforks running after them saying this is not fair, this is not right, we need to change it? When, you know, so to try and look for cultural explanation of how they get away with it. And part of that is because, you know, the there's a kind of whole mythologization of billionaires as somehow being, you know, they deserve it, they're somehow extremely smart and and meritorious. For many people, they're role models, you know. How many young uh people in in startup businesses, you know, dream of being the next Elon Musk or or Jeff Bezos or whoever it might be. But even more culturally, if you remember last year Jeff Bezos got married in Venice, he practically closed down the whole town as he's you know swanning around in a gondola with this massively ostentatious uh show of wealth that then gets paraded across the world's media as look, look at these great people, um uh the the masters of the universe. And somehow, almost with a view to say, people, you could be like this too. But of course, and maybe a handful of people will be like that in the future, but for the majority of people that's not possible. And in fact, for the majority of people, even more moderate expectations of a comfortable life um become more and more difficult. I mean, even in in developed countries like where we are here in Australia, you know, wealth inequality is broadening so much widely, and we have our own growing cartre of of uh of billionaires as well representing that as the kind of middle class is getting hollowed out, and we're kind of moving more and more to a kind of society of haves and haves nots. Um but at the same time, you know, there's a whole lot of forces there saying the way things are are good, right, and fair, and anything else is not. You've seen it um this year here, as we've kind of been debates in the media around changes, around tax reform that were came through in the budget. And you know, and various people saying, oh, you know, if we change these taxes that make housing more affordable for young people and and shift uh tax burden away from wages to to wealth earning, that you know, the sky's gonna fall in and everything's gonna be destroyed, and it's just catastrophizing uh, you know, at an extreme level. So again, there's so much trying to reinforce the system we have, and and I think my work in a kind of modest way is part of trying to resist that.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Try and trying to break down those myths around the the billionaires. Yeah, that that's one that comes up so much in my work. I'm constantly encountering very influential business people around the world and government people in in the Middle East, um in Asia, everywhere who assign someone like Elon Musk some special set of capabilities because he's good at amassing wealth, because he because he's uh obviously succeeded in that department, somehow he must be wise in other departments too. And I don't I never see the connection or why they should see that. But certainly in America it's more salient. Yeah. But but um yeah, the myth of the um somehow uh uh uh uh uh more capable uh person in other departments is the man.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

You know, uh leadership uh scholars call this the great man theory. Bearing in mind that the usual it is a very uh I use the man word man deliberately, it is a very masculine masculine image of greatness. And this is a theory which has zero uh um uh there's no evidence to support it. In fact, quite quite the contrary. But there was still a kind of idea, and it's been around for hundreds of years, that you know, there are some people who are greater than uh than the average people, um, and it is they and they alone who can who can take leadership positions and and and and create great things or or lead nations or or these days businesses to places they they otherwise couldn't go. You saw it last year when the um Tesla Board of Directors was justifying the extraordinary payout um that put Elon Musk on his way to being a trillionaire. And if you read the board papers, which are uh public, they specifically just say Elon is the only person who can do this without Elon, Tesla will not go anywhere. And you think this is you know such a gold conflict, though? No, it is. It's a diafication. I know, but he's not the guy who designed the cars, he's not the person who goes out selling them, he's not the person who works on the factory floor putting them together. Anything, I mean, anything great that's produced is produced by a whole bunch of people working together, but it just gets concentrated in this one person. And that's part of like one of the myths that these billionaires are somehow better than everyone else, as you say, at everything, even potentially morally superior. And you you you often hear people uh of this nature, you know, um really really stepping out of their lane and and kind of promoting particular views of the the future of humanity. When when Musk took over uh Twitter now X a few years ago, he wasn't just buying a company to make money, he was uh it was all about what did he call himself, uh a freedom of speech fundamentalist or something of that nature. It was it was about he was gonna restore democracy through technology.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

Yeah, he was he was until it inconvenienced him.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Yeah, exactly, exactly. But this is the kind of rhetoric of such greatness, but and it needs to be undermined because it's it's so damaging because as all that kind of floats above, trying to push us to think that these are great people, you know, uh leading us to a bold new feature uh future, underneath, you know, economic inequality is is uh literally killing people.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Yeah, another one um like this would be Bill Gates. So I spent so much time looking at energy solutions and technologies around the world, and I've traveled firsthand to see them, and and then I've looked at some of the things he's invested in. Yeah, and I think he must be surrounded by yes, men and women who who just won't contradict him because he's invested in things that I could have in in 10 minutes saved him you know $100 million on the investment. They're just not absolutely not going to go anywhere. Um, but yet he's seen, because he was good at developing a computer business, yeah, as someone that must must therefore deeply understand the potential of some of these technologies to save save uh on on emissions or climate or produce you know more more cleaner energy. And he has the it's incredible, you know, that that that that sort of extension of capability people are in their psychology.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

I mean, in many ways, Bill Gates was the prototype for the current uh batch of of you know Zuckerberg, Bezos, Must kind of billionaires, um uh and kind of you know at the forefront of the the growth of the the tech industry over over previous decades. But absolutely, I mean, didn't he he really I can't remember which order it was, but he really he released a book, uh I think the first one was on how to solve the climate change. And he had this whole thing about that he and he, with zero qualifications or experience in this field, had the answer. And it was only about a year later he released a book about how we can what we need to do to make sure we never have another pandemic. I mean the fact that someone had the had the nerve to think they could answer one of those questions, but to answer two within the course of a couple of years, I mean the arrogance is uh is um uh astounding.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Um it seems self-perpetuating because I don't think people around them will challenge that. Challenge it is a sycophancy, if you like. Yeah. Perhaps just to be the proximity to the money, I'm not sure, but it how it works. But clearly they're not hearing dissenting voices nearly enough to bring them down to earth, or they're not tolerating them.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Well, but Gates is an interesting example because now he comes across as a kind of, you know, cashmere jumper-wearing kind of uncle kind of kind of figure in many ways. But if you read the stories about his behaviour when he was head of Microsoft, he would, you know, the the stories are of very aggressive uh or you know, bullying type of management. Like when he was the company was young, apparently he used to walk around the car park at six o'clock to see who was still at work. And if you left early, then you know, maybe you're in trouble. And people used to go to meetings and play a game, you know, they'd they'd count the F-words to see how many times he said the F-word in meetings as a gauge of of his mood because he was constantly uh swearing. There was a time where someone was suggesting um introducing diversity initiatives into Microsoft, and you know, he went crazy saying, You're not gonna ruin my company with this F whatever. Um not an exact quote. Um so uh you know he did have that reputation as a very uh um uh aggressive bullying kind of character then. You don't see kind of those stories now. I mean, there's also other stories about his personal life, um, but clearly not a man lacking in self-confidence.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Yeah. So let me bring you back to this um this this this connection into democracy. To me, it it seems like uh the most dangerous part of all of this. Um that the power that comes from the wealth and then the c connection to uh power, the support, the dependency of people who who look to billionaires or or or give them the reins to power is leading to them uh influencing the entire democratic system and funding changes to it or attempts to change it.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

Um and and uh in the US particularly, I think that's salient at the moment, we we can see that. So how dangerous is this moment?

SPEAKER_01 18:16

How how much danger are we in of say losing losing the structures of democracy altogether with with wealth inequality sort of uh I think it's very much uh a real and present uh danger. I think the US system is probably the most extreme, um but it exists elsewhere in the world, certainly here in Australia, and this kind of trend towards oligarchy, so it's a trend to power being wielded by uh on the basis of how wealthy people are rather than on the basis of an equal form of citizenship, which is a formation of democracy. If you look at people who do hold power, it's directly correlated to Welsh people who hold political power more commonly come from uh um uh come from wealth, as well as the direct influence of power that we certainly see kind of in an extreme uh level in the US. Um, but also here's in Australia you've seen Clive Palmer's somewhat ham-fisted attempts at uh at uh at politicking. You've seen recently you know Gina Reinhardt, Australia's richest uh person, um uh giving uh uh an aeroplane to Pauline Hansen, the the the uh uh from the the populist One Nation Party. So you're seeing it here as well. We have more guardrails around the system legally than they have in the US that are kind of protecting things, but the the trend is the same. And bear in mind, Gina Reinhardt, well-known supporter of Trump, has hangs out in Mar-a-Lago from time to time. I believe, you know, uh calls herself one of the Trumpettes.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

Yeah, so she's an internal internationalization of there's almost some some level of coordination in there, you know. Um I remember something even worse than giving away aeroplanes is when she didn't like what a particular newspaper was saying, so she bought a controlling interest in the newspaper, and we saw Bezos do that with the Washington Post as well. I know that I find even more pernicious and dangerous. Um you add to the Murdoch Empire as a whole, and the amount of control over so many news channels, that to me seems exceptionally dangerous, and that's even before we get into AI and their control of the mechanisms for artificial intelligence.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

Yeah, and influence and also, of course, control over social media platforms. Um again, you know, Elon Musk's purchase of uh Twitter can only really be seen as a kind of political choice as much as as uh as an economic one. Um and so yeah, control over the media by billionaires and and by uh wealthy people is particularly worrying because you know the media and the the free press, you know, the fourth pillar, it's a central dimension of uh democracy. And the idea uh democratically is that the media and journalism in particular is there to hold power accountable, you know, to speak truth to power. But if the media is owned by people who are powerful, how can it perform that function? And that we see uh as very dangerous. And it's it's interesting, you know, you often hear more kind of uh reactionary types complain that the media is, you know, it's all left wing bias, and we never hear anything because the left controls the media. Like, look around. I mean, which me I mean maybe there are maybe there are some parts of the media that have a left wing perspective. But it's not happening in in uh in in much of it, particularly the Murdoch um kind of press, you know, here Sky News or in the US um Fox News. It's it's directly influenced, and often and there's money behind that too.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

Of course there is. And and unfortunately, the machine exists to make money, and money is made through rage, anger, you know, it's perpetuating certain issues. Um I love the phrase you used in your book. It's just a lovely summary of that discourse rigging. You know, um, just came across that. But to me, it's whoever controls the narrative wins the election. And it doesn't matter how the good how good the people are, if they're being told the same consistent story about the world and how fearful they need to be of crime, immigrants, failure, you know, whatever the the the enemy might happen to be. If they're all getting that same story, they'll all vote the same way. And um when you can control the channel's information, um, that to me seems exceptionally dangerous. And and I've had a lot of conversations on this podcast with people about the controlling of AI. There's a deification process with AI as well. People ascribe to AI capabilities well beyond what it's actually doing. It's just a natural tendency. Yeah. Um but the there's people behind that. You know, Elon's openly talked about his willingness to change you know, to make sure we we make it more right, you know, his particular AIs. Um I know.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

It's um well, I you know, I used to be a big user of Twitter. And I I really miss the old Twitter because it was a place which I I I engaged with, it was a source where I became aware of news and I became aware of debates. It's a place where a lot of people I knew, whether they be actual people I know as friends or just people I knew from border society and politics that I wanted to kind of keep up to date with. It performed, you know, for me, that kind of worked. And then it wasn't long after it became X that suddenly, well, first of all, I seemed to get so many of Elon's personal posts directed to me. Now, no algorithm influenced by my choices was doing that. Um and then for some reason, I don't know if it was kind of how the algorithm worked, because it but if it kind of realized it thought about something because of my kind of demographics, but I was getting a lot of videos of street fights. Now, I don't know, I've never searched for a street fight in my life. I have zero interest in seeing people punch each other on the street. But all of a sudden, I was getting this influx of videos of street fighting. And so, like many other people, I I've stopped using it because it became it just became uh there was something controlling it. Like I mean, I know that there was control before that, but it was something that I could kind of understand what it was doing, and I was happy to kind of participate in it. But but that level of uh control, I mean, maybe these street fights were supposed to try to distract me from my political concerns or something. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

Make you angry and afraid, the the toxicity that's I know. So um Yeah, uh I've stopped using it as well for all the same reasons a long time ago. Um so let's turn to the hard part. This is, you know, we're only solving potentially the world's biggest and most challenging problem. I mean but to me it it is, you know, we're we're really talking about a shift in philosophy since the 80s, right? So neoliberalism, this very distinctive moment when Thatcher and Reagan and others stood up, and and basically the world said the markets should decide, governments should get out of the way. We should let the the economics decide everything. And suddenly this unfettered economics and capitalism, well, in a great whoosh over the last few decades has become more and more dominant. Now I sort of came to this from different directions. I came from from an ecological destruction perspective. When we look at consumerism, we look at um emissions and pollution controls disappearing in um in the US, for example, federally, driven by money. So I'm seeing wealth in economy, uh, inequality and neoliberalism as driving huge ecological problems, a significant driver of some of the world's biggest problems. And um I think socially we agree the same thing. So it's big. What levers can we pull to start reversing that?

SPEAKER_01 26:45

Yeah, because I mean the thing is the levers are quite straightforward, to be honest with you. I think the mechanisms to change it are are quite simple. You know, you need to have mechanisms for redistribution uh of uh of wealth through tax and transfer systems that can reduce inequality, you know, kind of after the event, progressive taxation, um, uh welfare systems, universal basic income, so that there's a fairer distribution and that people can, you know, everyone can uh live well. You can address it through policies around pre-distribution, which is about making sure the inequalities aren't created in the first place by things like labor bargaining power, strength of trade unions, market rules, um uh, you know, breaking up um uh monopolistic and oligopolistic, you know, creating more market competition. This is all within a capitalist framework, it's not a socialist argument, right? Yeah. Um changing very you know institutional competition policy, housing policy. You can do it by creating more equal opportunities through education, you know, providing universal childcare so parents can uh um uh can work, and more generally kind of dealing with the the um unequal distribution of assets by moving towards wealth taxation systems over income taxation. So the whole policies can do that. Yeah what's holding us back is politics and culture, not policy, the political system. How do you get to a stage where those things can be implemented because of the massive resistance there will be to it politically? So it's almost as if we don't want it yet. And and and and uh uh any moves towards trying to make this change will be met with massive resistance, particularly through the media, because it goes against the interests of the wealthy people you mentioned before who control um much of that media. So you see, you know, small changes like you've seen with the budget here, get get a massive backlash of fairly uninformed and outrageous um arguments designed to kind of distract and and and push things back. But also culturally you you'll uh get pushback of people who will think this isn't fair because it will destroy meritocracy or it will destroy aspiration and and ambition. So the barriers are political and cultural. Uh how to do it is there. They're big barriers, though. No, they're huge barriers. Um but it's not for a shortage of ideas of what to do uh that that's that's preventing us having a more equal society. Yep. It's that the the the the cultural political forces that that uh uh want to maintain the current in unequal status quo are extraordinarily strong. Again, my book is a small way of trying to undermine some of that.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Yeah, um I guess the individual listening to this feels very removed from the levers of change. You know, we're we're a couple of steps removed. We get to vote, we get to put in hopefully a representative that might represent some of those interests, but now you're already fighting with different, you know, different interests in the media and that sort of thing, and hopefully you get enough of those representatives in into uh uh a parliament or a congress to effect change. So and and where and they're fighting to to vote in a system where the information flows are fighting them. So grassroots democracy, you know, we talk about that, but is that ultimately what this is about? We have to re find and re-get get back in touch with actually local campaigning.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

No, I think it is, and I think it's it's about exercising our democratic rights, not just at the ballot box, but every day. You and me having this conversation, you know, you contacted me and said, Would you like to talk about this? And I said yes. And so we are engaged, we are doing democracy now by having this conversation, as you know, might be people who are listening to it who then go and talk to people. So I think it's a it's about realizing that voting is part of democracy, obviously, and having you know re democratic representatives, but it's also a part of our everyday lives. And if each of us can participate in that in ways that are within our power. Now, that might be going to meetings of your, you know, um in your local community, it might be um joining uh a trade union, it might be you know, I'm an academic. What do I know how to do? Research, teach, and write. They're my three skills. Yes. So those are the things I do, you know.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

Within your domain of expertise.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

Yeah, within my domain of expertise and within uh, you know, a role that that I that uh I legitimately have to be able uh um uh to do that. And all of us in different ways have different positions that that we can work from. Again, and a lot of that is working within the community and families that we're a part of. So it's important that we kind of exercise democracy every day in in some way, if it's not just having a conversation with somebody.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

It's it's really, I think you point out in your book, it's it's literally um the definition of democracy and it's power of the people. And and we're moving towards this plutocracy, is that the right term? Uh and and uh uh so if we were to prioritize one thing above all else, I guess it's it's the the it's restoring or fighting to protect in any way we can, and anything that's trying to erode those levers of democracy. Would that be fair? And and using it because that's they're under threat, so are many other things, but if we could get that back so that the power of ordinary non-wealthy people is properly representative, yeah, it it hopefully flows through to a better world.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

That's that's uh how how democracy works. And democracy is never democracy, I think it's important to not to think of it as a kind of state of affairs. Democracy is always an aspiration. It's better to think of democracy as kind of like a promise. You never actually achieve it, but you've got to try and keep that promise every day as best as you can. Or you might- another metaphor, you can think of democracy as like a horizon. Like if you're walking to the horizon, it's because you see that as a worthwhile goal. You never actually get there because it keeps moving away. But it's about the movement towards something, hopefully trying to achieve something better for the world, better for people, whether it be political, whether it be economic, or in in you know, the examples you've been using, whether it be ecological and environmental. But how do we continue to try and pursue um uh this idea that we might progress to something better as a human race, no matter how hopeless that might seem at times, still trying to keep that promise.

SPEAKER_00 34:16

What about um other ways of exercising bottom-up power? Uh and one in particular it would be the bottom-up, the economic power, the buying power. Yeah, so I remember when people stopped buying Tesla around the world, and it must have had an effect. And I often think you know, the way, certainly the way uh someone like Elon Axe sometimes is is is uh almost psychopathic. He doesn't really care what people think of him or or about others, but he certainly cares about his money. Yes. Uh and so when people stop buying them as an effect. Now not not everyone can stop or or is in a position to, but I've seen consumer boycotts work really, really well at a smaller scale and completely change um a political decision because companies are hurting and they lobby their the op the politicians they own accordingly. Uh what do you think? Is that a legitimate pathway here?

SPEAKER_01 35:23

Yeah, I mean I think it can be a legitimate pathway. I don't think it's a kind of answer to the whole thing. It's it's could be potentially um uh part of part of that answer. Um but certainly, you know, the behavior of consumers towards uh brands can make uh a big difference. And and and if you're hurting businesses in the bottom line, yeah, they will respond um uh one one way or another. So it is it is possible that that uh that might be. Remember years ago when they were bombing in uh French were bombing in Mureroa, and then people were boycotting whole products? Um so it can, it certainly can uh have an effect. Um uh but the political process, it uh it's not a substitute, I don't think, for a broader um uh political uh process either. Um and as well, you know, hopefully gaining, you know, movements don't just have to be within one country, they can be much broader than that um uh nationally. And we saw that um with the with the um uh the Wall Street uh uh movement, you know, uh after the Occupy Wall Street, after the um after the GFC. In a sense, that kind of failed because capitalism and neoliberalism came back even stronger. But on the other hand, you know, that what was happening then, it's going back some years now, right? Um 15 years or so. And do you remember they had the slogan, we are the 99%? That was when the beginning of economic inequality getting back on the political agenda, which since the 80s, since Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan's time you mentioned, had pretty much been off. It was all about growth, growth, growth, and distribution was just not considered. So even, you know, these kind of global political movements can also um make a big difference. So we've seen we saw a number of them at that time, you know. Um, you know, there was the Me Too movement, uh, for example, the Black Lives Matter movement, really raising political awareness, I mean also raising quite a lot of backlash. But the these are also ways that people you can see in recent times participating in democracy as a part of daily life, not just once every three or four years or however long frequently your your election is.

SPEAKER_00 37:47

What about um I'm gonna throw more of these at you just to explore that? Um what about independent, more independent politicians? I I look at um the US, I've traveled to to pretty much every state, uh, and before the the first Trump uh uh presidency, I couldn't believe how much support I was hearing. And I traveled through 42 states asking the same question. Why? Why do you like him? And the answer was very clear. You know, there were two things they said. He's a businessman, he'll run this place, you know, like a business. And I'm saying I'm not sure you want it run like a business, but but the other one was they they really hated what they had. They hated all politicians, they felt that they were not properly represented by the political class, if you like. And I got that from Democrats and Republicans across the board. Democrats, almost university, though universally that I spoke to did not like Hillary Clinton. They wanted something better to represent their party. Now, how do we get that representation?

SPEAKER_01 38:55

I know, and this is a a feature of liberal democracies around the world. And I would actually say much of the reason that we have the populist problem now isn't because of the actions on the political right, it's because of a failure on the political left. Um and you know, through this neoliberal era, we saw a relative alignment around kind of this globalized economy, free market type of approach, and political differences were more about social and cultural issues, a lot of discussions about questions of identity politics and kind of culture war issues, and politic politics was divided on these things. Now, those are important debates, I'm not suggesting they weren't, but core questions of economy were stripped out of a left-wing agenda. And so what that also then meant is that you had a uh uh a significant portion of working people, and to some extent unemployed people, who were largely not represented by either side of politics. Yes. In fact, not only they weren't represented, they were dismissed when Hillary Clinton talked about the basket full of deplorables. This is the this is the people. So you have you people the people who are suffering economically, who are on the wrong side of uh of inequality, were no longer, you know, the as left-wing parties became middle class parties, not working class parties anymore. And it kind of created uh uh a new group of fairly large group of disenfranchised people. And to those are many of those are the people who voted for Trump. So the hollowing out of the middle class and the creation of a disenfranchised um working class leads the way to populism. And to some extent, uh, you know, the US was a forerunner of that. You saw similar things in the UK, where about 10 years' anniversary of Brexit now, and now they're in a state where Nigel Farage and Reform looking like they have a real chance of getting into Downing Street. You think UK citizens feel unrepresented by both sides. Yes. Yes. And frankly, they're right. They're not represented by either side. And so what happens then is someone comes in claiming to represent their interests. Yep. And that's obviously politically attractive.

SPEAKER_00 41:25

But they don't really represent their interests. No, and one of the straws they grasp for is that maybe a businessman or a billionaire will will they'll they'll be different and they'll help us. Yeah. And and so you end up with that as well.

SPEAKER_01 41:37

Yeah. Which is that's not really how business works. That's not business is about taking money from people.

SPEAKER_00 41:46

I always remember that movie The Corporation, which I loved in 2003. And the corporation is a psychopath, and and and uh it doesn't care about people.

SPEAKER_01 41:56

I know him actually, he's a professor at the University of uh uh Toronto, a professor of uh of law. Um yeah, the idea that if if the legal personhood uh which corporations have legally, what kind of person would it be? And it matches the psychological definition of uh being uh psychopath.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

Yeah. So just just this idea of independence though. So we've got we've got these two, we get these monolithic parties, and often just two of them, yeah who cannot possibly represent everyone's interests when they start turning into monoliths. Yeah. And then we saw something of a breakup of that in this country, in the sitting in now in Australia, in the last uh federal election here with a bunch of climate and capitalist focused independence. They're very focused on the combination that that uh energy change is a money-making enterprise, and we can do that well.

SPEAKER_01 42:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:51

Um, and and uh and and and we save money at the same time. Um now that seems to produce something healthier to an extent. Certainly the discourse is much more varied now. Yeah. Is that the direction? You know, we need to break down some of these. I mean, I guess you can't dictate direction here. You go you get what you get.

SPEAKER_01 43:12

That is what is happening here. Um and to some extent in the UK, or in the UK it seems to be the the ruling Labour Party that's disintegrating, where here it was the the opposition um right-wing liberal, uh centre-right liberal party that's disintegrating. But yeah, there's been a kind of for for countries like the UK and Australia and the US, there has been a system, you know, pretty much through the 20th century, certainly post-World War II 20th century, of there being political differences, but it being largely revolving around um uh a two party system, yeah, and that with neoliberalism those that the the two sides of those parties coming closer and closer and closer together, and that's been the kind of norm. And that is It's falling apart now, and it's falling apart through through right-wing populism growth, through alternatives from independent politicians who come from different, you know, spheres, less so in Australia, but in other countries also the growth of uh of left-wing populism. My view is that, you know, if you go back to the 80s, I'm 59 years old, so I was a teenager uh for most of the uh the 80s, so it was a kind of formative uh time. So I remember that. And that was a big time of change, the birth of the domination of neoliberalism. I think now we are at a time of equally significant change. It's just that because we're we're in it, we don't really know where it's going. Yeah as we didn't know then where it was going, as we know that in retrospect. But you can feel the discontent. Yes. I feel exactly the way I felt then, in terms of the period of change. And then, you know, the discontent was with stagflation and kind of you know, um uh lack of economic growth and and uh opportunities and the idea that this what Thatcher called popular capitalism and her adoption of the economic views of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman would suddenly liberate the world to uh you know, and Ronald Reagan said that the trickle down economics. And none of that actually worked, but uh but it it created a massive influence. And I think we're at a similar state of flux now, but I think for I don't and why we might see some of the trends that are happening now and the direction, uh it's not really possible to know exactly what it is because we're still swimming in it, waving our arms, trying to stay afloat, and we don't know exactly where that current's going.

SPEAKER_00 45:52

So in the last 40 years, are there any countries that have pushed back and reversed this direction towards neoliberalism?

SPEAKER_01 46:02

I think everyone's been caught up in it to some extent because uh mainly through effects of globalization and countries need to, and you know, well not need to, but you know, compelled to to engage in global trade and then you know and and the the the freeing up of global markets, and you know, countries tended to generally get swept up around that. You but it's been adopted differently in in different countries. You certainly see uh a different version in the Scandinavian countries and the whole idea of you know what some people call Nordic capitalism, which is is much more um of a welfare state uh-based capitalism. And where countries like the UK, you know, set fire to the welfare state under under Thatcher and kind of you know destroyed trade unionism, that was less the case in Scandinavian countries. And to some extent, uh Central European countries, Germany would be an example as well. So I think it's been adopted differently. It was even adopted differently here. I mean, near the first round of neoliberal reforms here were implemented by the Hawke Keaton government, uh Labour government. But that was where, you know, when everyone else was was uh privatizing, what did we do? We introduced the universal healthcare system of Medicare. So Australia's been different. I mean, the the the the the hard neoliberal changes here were made relatively late under the Howard uh um government. So yeah, it's you you different kind about I don't think there's any country that's reverse being able to resist it. Even if you look at China and China's entry into the uh global market, um now you wouldn't call China a neoliberal country by any means, but you can't say that it hasn't been influenced by global neoliberalism.

SPEAKER_00 47:53

They've certainly taken what they want out of it and and uh and it's been an incredible success. One of the people I've had on this podcast, uh, an energy analyst Michael Barnard, has made a hobby of collecting headlines from the Economist magazine of people who write about why the Chinese economy is about to fail. Yeah. Right? But he's got hundreds of them, you know, over over the years in a spreadsheet. And it's just wonderful because everyone sort of says we can't work, you know, but they've managed to make their version work. But it's a different approach, you know.

SPEAKER_01 48:26

You know, you've got many people now worried that uh AI is going to lead to massive job losses, and you're already seeing organizations restructuring around this line. Uh the Chinese government have outlawed it. You're not allowed to sack people because of AI. And so that's I mean, that's not a democratic approach, um, but it's a you know, it's a different kind of approach. But that the same pressure's been responded to differently.

SPEAKER_00 48:54

Oh, I never dismiss any of them. It's always there's always another way. And it's always interesting to look at them and learn from them. Yeah, yeah. Um wow. Um okay, so one of the things that as we look at sort of this time of discontent that I wonder, I hope it's not true, but I sort of in the back of my mind is you know, do we need it things to get catastrophic before people really, really take a different approach to the governments they elect? And for me, again, it's um ecological, you know, the the inability to get house insurance in in parts of the US because of the storm damage and and and all the coastal issues and you know, that's climate change and and tornadoes and all the rest of it, and you can map the frequency of that. Maybe that has to get bad enough, or maybe people have to get so poor that they literally are taking to the streets in a whole different motivated fashion that although in the US that's uh that's happening.

SPEAKER_01 49:51

Um one of the last trips in the US, I was in um San Francisco. You know, one of the wealthy places, you know, just kind of at the the you know, down the road from Silicon Valley where all the tech billionaires are. I know, and there's like people living in shanty towns. Thousands and thousands. And that's not like, you know, that's not homelessness, you know, caused by by you often get homelessness as it's related to questions of mental illness and and or addiction or alcoholism. But this is just people who've fallen through the safety net and families living in these places. You see, you know, someone's telling me they were walking past uh one of these shanty towns in in Los Angeles, and you see kids coming out with backpacks going to school. Um that so that's the worst example, and and then you have uh, you know, people who are on the other side of the inequality divide living in gated communities to to keep the the uh the the fear of the the the hordes out. I mean, what kind of life is that?

SPEAKER_00 50:56

I know how extreme does it have to get though before there's some sort of upright political uprising anyway. Um yes, it's it's I go there all the time, yeah, and it's noticeably worse. It's just you uh it's visual, very visual. There are whole parts of Oakland and um University of California at Berkeley, just near there, just street after street after street of homeless encampments, and they weren't there, you know, when you go back a little ways. So it's very disturbing. But okay, so let me throw some rather different ones at you just as we come to a close. Yeah um and they might be hopelessly naive, so tell me if they are. Um it can be quite uh useful. Um I think back to someone we had on the podcast, John Helliwell, who's the editor of the Global Happiness Report, which uh is mind-blowingly good. It's so interesting what makes people truly happy in different countries and community, of course, is a huge part of this. But basically, as I reflect on the findings of that kind of research, can we change the psychology of success? You know, can we target what people consider wealth and success? Because obviously not monetary, true success is and happiness comes from relationships, from meaningful work, having meaning in your life and in your work, uh, trusting the community you live in, a huge part of those sorts of findings, but or this notion of reasonable prosperity, you know, um, uh in terms of money, security comes first, and then not accumulating vast amounts of of wealth. Do you think there's any hope of changing the trajectory of the psychology of success?

SPEAKER_01 52:42

I think uh it's uh it's always important to retain hope. I'll be even more naive and say that what about a situation where success comes from how much you contribute to other people? Yeah. And not just be, you know, part of neoliberalism is individualism. Is it's all about me and and everything's about my benefit and my wealth. It it's almost like we've made a virtue out of selfishness or we've made a virtue out of greed. That's a topic, a comment from the subject of an essay in the 70s by Ayn Rand. Um and to reverse those kind of values, I think that would be tremendously difficult, but uh but absolutely uh desirable. And I think this is a it's interesting you use the word hope because I've been thinking a lot about hope recently, and it's a great book uh called Um Hopeful Pessimism. Um and the idea is that if you are optimistic, that means you think everything's gonna work out fine, so you don't have to do anything. If you're pessimistic, that's everything that's gonna work out bad. There's nothing you can do about it. But if you're pessimistic and hopeful, that means you think it's going in a bad direction, and that's why I've got to do something about it. So pessimism is actually can be a political force because it will you can motivate to try and make things different. So it's important to have, I wouldn't say naive, but perhaps idealistic um kind of views of of a future as a way of motivating political action. So around these things, can that change? Everything can change.

SPEAKER_00 54:25

I one thing that gives me hope with this at this aspect of the conversation is we're sitting in a business school. You're a professor of business and society in a business school at a major Australian university. And so your students are obviously hearing much more nuanced messages about contribution and relationships to society than just how to run a good business.

SPEAKER_01 54:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:49

Um so that's some hope there, isn't there? I mean, it's an educational process.

SPEAKER_01 54:53

There are a number of, I mean, I mean, and that's not just me. I mean, this is part of what what what uh has been our general approach here at the business school to try and offer people a broader sense of business education than the one hand, you know, we don't want accountants graduating who can't read balance sheets. Not saying that. We need to be able to do that, but not just that, you know, to also have a broader uh appreciation of of the role and purpose of business and society. And there is quite uh, you know, something of a of a movement towards that direction, uh, not in all business schools, but but in in in many, and certainly amongst many individual kind of academics and teachers and and professors, that's very much uh uh alive and and present. So, yeah, the stereotypes don't always hold when it comes to business schools, are they?

SPEAKER_00 55:40

Yeah. It might not be a five-year transition, but maybe a 50-year one, but it's all it's all contributing to it.

SPEAKER_01 55:45

Well, it's taken us that long to get into this mess, so it's probably gonna take us that long to get out if that's the direction we go.

SPEAKER_00 55:51

Do you think we can recalibrate even social norms about I guess it's the same question, but what is reasonable prosperity? Because massive wealth accumulation is gross. It it it does affect a lot of people. They see, you know, uh uh so just recalibrating what a level of, you know, it it's one thing to amass a couple of million dollars, it's quite another to amass a billion and sit on it and not share it.

SPEAKER_01 56:16

You know, it's but this is the question, you know, about inequality. If we accept, you know, a liberal democratic system where you have a society and a politics that aspires to democracy, and you have an economy that's market-driven, and capitalism, capitalist. It's not to say that you want a totally equal system, which would be a kind of you know, communist utopia, or in those terms, where everyone, you know, I think Marx says, you know, from each according to his ability to each according to their needs. That's not the idea. Within uh a market-based economy, you will have inequality because the idea is that the idea that people might aspire to have a better life for themselves and their their family is what does provide aspiration and does provide uh kind of incentive in a way to get ahead and be productive and lead to economic growth. So the question isn't about whether there should be any inequality. The question is how much. How much inequality is healthy in order to maintain the balance between democracy and and capitalism. And I think we can debate a long time as to what that should be what the right amount of inequality should be. But whatever it is, it's hard to justify that it should be where it is now and the direction that it's going in now. So often you know you get into micro debates around should we have this policy or should we have that policy. But what about the bigger question is what would a fair society look like? And on that basis, how do we try to get there? Because a fair society isn't, as I said, it's not about total inequality. Sorry, total equality, it's about choosing a level of inequality that that allows everyone in society to still get on and to and to still uh live good lives. So it's not uh it's not like a competition between the rich and the poor.

SPEAKER_00 58:16

One more naive one. You mentioned accounting. You know, the globe the global accounting standard for national success is being economic growth, GDP specifically, which is obviously a very poor measure because it's so crude. Recently the UN tried to broaden that very significantly with a whole matrix of measures. I think their issue was they couldn't get everyone to agree. Yeah. But how realistic is it that we can progressively add more to that balance sheet and make it truly reflective of business impacts on society and ecology?

SPEAKER_01 58:52

That's a tough one because GDP has been so so dominant. I mean, even you know, the idea of having uh inequality measures. I actually did put this proposal forward uh last year in an article I wrote for the conversation saying that if Australia is serious about inequality, then it should have targets for inequality, the same way we have targets for other things. Um zero traction. Maybe not zero, but not much. So so I think but we've got to still so I think, I mean, on the one hand, coming up with kind of happy s happiness indices is a way. But and and our treasurer, uh Jim Chalmers, did consider that uh, I think, you know, um so some years ago, but then I think got caught up in the realpolitik, perhaps.

SPEAKER_00 59:41

Um a field trip to Bhutan, perhaps in the water.

SPEAKER_01 59:46

But even having a basic thing like adding uh uh a goal for you know inequality, there's a number of ways that that can be measured, would be uh quite straightforward things to do. But the obsession with economic growth above all else, irrespective of who benefits from it. It's like thinking if we live in a society, uh it's just you and me, and you have you know um uh uh uh a million dollars and I have zero, the headline is average wealth, half a million, you know, whatever it is, I've lost my number though, half a million. Yeah. That's irrelevant, right? Um, for the fact that I'm hungry and you're living a great life. But that's what happens because it's just the total and the average that gets considered. So even at that basic level, considering economic distribution um uh as a political goal could make a big difference, even before getting into the harder metrics around happiness and so forth.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:40

Well, coming to an end, I'm gonna give your book a bit of a plug just to finish this. But before before we do, um, and the reason is I love it. I love what you've written there, but uh before we do, just where should people go to connect more with understanding the processes around neoliberalism, the the wealth disparity and its effect on democracy? Are there particular places you direct people resources to go further into this?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:06

Oxfam always produced some great uh reports. It's worth having a look look at uh what Oxfam are doing. Specifically on inequality, right? They measure it. Yeah, specifically on uh in inequality, um as well as a range of other things on a global level. Um you know, there's a lot there's uh there's a number of stuff that resources you'll find through through uh through the UN. You know, there's uh a number of good books uh around that you could read. Uh I've not plenty of book here. Yeah, um you know Ingrid Robbins Limit Libertarianism, where she suggests putting a Welsh cap on on uh uh on Welsh. Uh uh Guido Alfani released a book recently called Um Gods Amongst Men, looking at the history of inequality. So there's plenty there um um uh to read and and look, both in terms of books and and on the web. But also, you know, you you'll find a lot just watching movies and you know, cultural uh area, you know, uh uh and the arts are also kind of dealing with these issues. So you just kind of need to be a bit more open to if you're not kind of aware of these things, yeah. They're not hiding from you.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:25

Well, uh everyone listening to this. You you uh couldn't do better than starting with um uh Professor Rhodes' latest book. And it's stinking rich, the four myths of the good billionaire. I don't normally sort of out and out plug books on this, but uh I want to pull that one out because it's such a work of scholarship. It's good storytelling as well. And if you start there, it does reference so much in terms of other scholarly work, other research, other inequality research, points you in lots of directions. And it's connecting, even though the title's focused on the billionaire, it connects into the deeper issues and the history of neoliberalism and some of the mechanisms of a fantastic primer. And and to me, as I said at the meaning of this, early in our conversation, it seems to be a causal factor, at least, in in you know, behind most of our challenges in 2026. So it's it's really something I'd recommend everyone to take a look at.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:25

Um that's another book worth reading, too. I can't remember the name of the author off the top of my head, but hopeful pessimism, it's uh it's worth a read. Uh but yes, I absolutely am. And the thing is you see things you know that that that strike that chord of injustice. Um and that is what should should spark political action of some kind, whatever it is that we're able to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:01

Professor Carl Rhodes, thank you so much for the conversation today.